The Prize in the Game (32 page)

"She still believes you are an honorable man," Maga said. "If you go out to fight without at least a betrothal, she will see that you are not, because you have broken your pledge. I might even
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have to inquire where that dog came from and why you gave it to her."

Maga spoke to the gate guard and they swept inside the dun, the row of carts following. Ferdia drove in silence as Maga directed him toward the storehouses. He could see it all now. Even dead, the dog could confound his honor. It was just like the stories of Lew or Wydion; curses set on a hero, the one mistake he had made had the power to overset everything else.

"You will have to speak to my father and explain it to him," he said.

This time, Maga's smile was triumphant.

7

THE BATTLE AT THE FORD

25

(CONAL)

Darag came walking down the road alone. She hadn't come again tonight.

Conal turned and signaled to the boy waiting, who set off at once back to the camp at a run. He braced himself against the bole of an elm as the pain came through him again. He tried not to tense, to relax against it as his mother had told him. He was the best Oriel could do for a sentry right now. While he knew it was a

very poor best, he would do what he could, always. He had argued against giving the duty to the children and servants, or even to Amagien and Orlam and Inis, though Orlam had volunteered.

It was necessary to have someone there who could run at need, as the fighting folk could not, now. He had agreed to keep one of the children with him, and it had proved useful.

Even without being able to run, or fight, or do anything much, it was right that a champion be here, at the edge of the wood, waiting. Even on a damp afternoon like this, he was glad to be here. It got him out of the camp and away from the others, which he found a blessing. When Conary had suggested that the children could have the duty alone, Conal had said it made him feel better to be doing something. The other sentries had agreed. He wondered if they also spent their days thinking that they would be the first to fall to the enemy spears if Darag or Atha failed them and let the whole host of Connat through.

Conal drew breath as the pain left him for the moment. "Was it a good day, cousin?" he called.

Darag came nearer. He was black with blood again. His armor coat must have got drenched with it, and his face and legs were spattered. He raised his hand in greeting and grinned cheerfully. It was hard not to show that he hated him. Conal could have laughed to think of the reasons he had hated Darag before. Now none of the other reasons mattered. It was hard not to hate anyone who was well, even the servants who had not fallen to the curse, let alone Darag. It was probably good that Emer had not come. She might have seen resentment in his eyes. Maybe she had seen that on the first two nights and that was why she had not come back since. If only he didn't miss her so much.

"I held the road a seventh day," Darag said as he came close enough for conversation.

They stood a moment and looked at each other. They had already made all the jokes that could be made, on the days that had come before. Then the pain took Conal again, and he looked away, staring hard at a fringed piece of creamy fungus at the tree's root and just trying to breathe deeply, not giving in to the pain. Plenty of strong champions back at camp were screaming when the pains took them. He had screamed only once himself, when it came on him unexpectedly between one stride and the next, tearing through his guts like a jagged knife. He had fallen awkwardly, and the jolt from the fall bruised him and took his defenses. Screaming hadn't helped. It may even have made it worse. He was bitterly ashamed of it, most of all because his father had been nearby at the time. He had nearly knocked Amagien off his feet. He would not scream again, and certainly he would never scream in front of Darag. As the pain passed off this time he leaned into the tree and panted for a moment. His lips were bitten ragged
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already. Where he had not been clutching it, the bark was still spotted with cool water from the rain that had fallen an hour ago.

"Is Emer well?" Conal asked when he could speak again.

"She took a spear in her arm," Darag touched his own arm, just above the elbow. "But the spear was there, we could heal it without too much trouble. It wasn't a bad wound that would leave a weakness. Apart from that, she's fine. She's tired from all the fighting, of course. She sends her love to you, but she said she had to get back before they missed her."

This was what she had said every night since the third. Conal was surprised how much it hurt to hear that she had been wounded again. He buried his disappointment, pushing his sense of his own helplessness down with it. That sort of pain he was good at hiding. He just wished he could talk to her. "Did she say if she was having trouble with Maga?"

"She didn't say anything about it," Darag said. "She doesn't complain. You are fortunate to have her as your charioteer. As soon as this is over, you must marry her right away, if we all live. I will support that before

Conary and your parents."

"Thank you," Conal said, dumbfounded by this support. "If that isn't possible, we have talked about running away together."

"What worse could Maga do to Oriel than this?" Darag asked, waving a hand that seemed to take in his blood-soaked coat.

"Were you wounded?" Conal asked.

"Only little wounds that are healed already," Darag said.

"It's not your own blood you've been wading in, then?"

Darag frowned, then looked down at himself in mild surprise. "No, this is the blood of Laran ap Noss, a champion of Connat. His head is on my chariot now. My sword took him in the throat and the blood went everywhere."

"Your sword?" Conal echoed and raised his eyebrows.

"Not my best weapon, I know." Darag shrugged. Conal had almost always been able to beat him with the sword, though that didn't stop Darag trying. Nothing stopped Darag trying. He'd never admit he was beaten. "It was quite a long fight, very tiring. I don't know why you like swords so much. But he was another husband of

Elenn's. Emer had eaten with him last night. She didn't feel comfortable going against him. So when he came up and made his boast, I asked if he would fight me on foot and he agreed."

"He didn't know who Emer was?" Conal asked quickly.

"He didn't. But he was an honorable man, with an honorable charioteer, and they agreed at once." Darag sighed. "I have killed four of the poor girl's husbands now, starting with Atha's brother. How long can this go on?"

"Until Maga stops attacking, or until Beastmother lets us come and join you," Conal said. As he raised his hand to his head to make the Beastmother sign, he could feel the pain beginning again, slowly this time, building up as it ran through him like a cramp. He bent forward and rested his forehead on the cool, damp tree.

"Wouldn't you be better lying down?" Darag asked. The concern in his voice made Conal grit his teeth. To his surprise, gritting his teeth, combined with calm breathing, actually seemed to help a little.

"Lying down is much worse," he said as soon as he could, fighting to make his tone light. "I have even been sleeping, as much as I can between pains, sitting up leaning back against a tree."

"I haven't been sleeping much either," Darag said. "I can lie down in comfort, but the screams come so often and sound so terrible."

"You should sleep," Conal said awkwardly. "We all need you to be well."

Darag smiled, almost a grimace. "I am glad I can keep the road. But it makes me feel so cut off
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from the rest of you."

"You've run mad at last," Conal said, rolling his eyes. "How terrible, all the champions of Oriel are struck down by a curse except one, and that one is as crazy as an oracle-priest."

Darag laughed. The pain came to Conal just as he finished speaking, not a very bad one this time but much too soon after the last one, when he was still weak from it. It seemed to him that the pains were growing closer together. This one ran through his belly, both a gripping and a cramping, as if he had eaten too many green apples. It would not have been too terrible, except that it had been going on for seven days without a break. It was hard to bear Darag's laughter.

He bit his lip and set himself to endure. If he had been well, he might have fought Darag now, for the thousandth time. But if he had been well, they wouldn't all need Darag the way they did.

In some ways, that was the worst of thismdashnot only was he helpless, but that Darag should be the one who wasn't.

"Don't worry," he said lightly as he straightened up. "My mother says it is no worse than childbirth."

"Lots of the women are saying that," Darag said a little uneasily.

"My mother said that's why she decided not to have any more children," Conal said, waving his hand airily.

"But it's like seasickness. Nobody dies of it, they just wish they would."

He had expected Darag to laugh, but he frowned instead. "I always heard that childbirth hurts, but it is a mystery, that the woman is in the hand of the Mother. But then I heard of a woman in Muin who died having a baby once, in our great-grandfather's time."

"Died?" Conal was astonished. "I never heard that. Who told you?"

"Samar ap Ardan," Darag said. "She said there was a young wife living out in the woods whose husband had been killed by a falling tree, and she started walking towards Muin and the baby came, and she was alone and didn't know the right prayers and too afraid to call on the Mother without prayers, maybe, so she just . . .

died of the pain."

"Maybe a wolfmdash" Conal began. He was going to add, "or a bear," but the pain came down hard and this time, he couldn't trust himself to speak through it.

When he could look at Darag again, Darag was staring at the sky. "Maybe a wolf or a bear got her on the way," Conal said, keeping his voice low. If Darag hadn't been there, he would have rocked to and fro a little;

that sometimes helped. "Or maybe it is just the sort of story people tell late at night on watch to scare each

other. Inis might know. But in any case, this isn't childbirth."

"Childbirth doesn't usually last this long," Darag said. "Aunt Elba was two days with Orlam, one night with

Leary, and half a day with the twins. She says your mother was a day and a night with you, and my mother was three days with me." He lowered his voice a little at the end, as always when he spoke of his mother.

"You've really been thinking about this," Conal said.

"Maybe because I'm not suffering it," Darag said. "I asked last night. Aunt Elba said that it was just this sort of pain, but it was all worth it because you knew you would have a child at the end."

"Well, maybe that just might make this all worthwhile," Conal said and laughed, which was a mistake because it brought on the pain again.

"But what could you be giving birth to, if you were?" Darag asked. Even if Conal had been able to speak, he would have had no answer.

"She said we would suffer as the mare suffered," Conal said after a short eternity which was only the pain.

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With automatic piety, he touched his hand to his head in the way that symbolized Beastmother as he spoke of her. Darag echoed him, looking more worried than ever. "Grandfather thinks that means for a term of days, and so does the oracle-priest of Connat, ap Fial. But we have passed three already, and six. What if it never leaves us? The mare died."

Darag hesitated, drew breath, thought better of it, then spoke at last. "I don't think so. I think that if what we saw in the Cave of Cruachan means anything, it means we will survive this." He drew breath again, carefully.

"Besides, the reason I have been wondering about birth is because I had a dream about the first times. About the building of Ardma-chan. In my dream, the mare gave birth as she was killed, and Beastmothermdash"

again he touched his head "mdashspoke through the filly that was born. And all the folk of the dun lay on the ground in pain that was very like the pain you have."

Conal looked at him sharply. "Have you told Inis?"

"You know how hard it is to ask Inis anything," Darag said guiltily. "I had this dream before you killed the mare, before any of this happened. But I had it over and over."

"Inis was always asking us about dreams like that," Conal said accusingly. Then the absurdity of it struck him and he smiled. "Of course I never told him my dreams either, and no doubt we had the same reason."

"You have dreams?" Darag asked, shaking his head. "Then they could have made oracle-priests out of both of us and left the kingship to poor Leary?" He grinned at Conal.

It was difficult to do, because the pain was coming again, but Conal managed an answering grin.

He let the pain flow through him, trying not to be impatient although he knew what he wanted to say and could not say it. He knew better than to try to talk across the pains. He had heard other people trying. Talking came too close to screaming. The pain felt like lightning striking through him, slowly. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Darag kept standing there waiting for it to go, not showing any impatience. Hatred welled up in Conal like bile in his throat, but he swallowed it back. He could have clutched it to him like a familiar cloak on a cold night, but instead, he pushed it away. This wasn't Darag's fault, he thought for the first time. Not everything was. It had taken this to make him see it, but it was true.

"Remember how we let Leary win the race on the road to Cruachan?" Conal asked as soon as he had breath.

Darag's grin had recalled Muin, where their rivalry had for a little while seemed a wholesome thing. "Leary would make a terrible king of Oriel."